Tamebay has always been about finding new ways to sell, and the latest to trial an innovative selling platform is Boots. ITV reckon that we’ll go mad for buying the lippy that Love Islanders are wearing so they’re making the programme into shoppable TV, allowing viewers to discover and shop items from its programmes directly on screen.
This is the first service of its kind in the UK but before you get too excited and decide you’ll have to watch Love Island for the first time ever, bear in mind that it relies on some clever tech built into the latest LG telly. Forget dual screening and shopping on your tablet while watching telly, just shop directly within the programme.
“We are very excited to be partnering with ITV and TheTake on the new and innovative opportunity. Launching shoppable TV as part of our wider partnership with Love Island is a great way to help customers easily shop the products they spot in the villa and recreate iconic islander looks from the show. It will simplify the customer journey and bring the Boots brand even closer to the Love Island audience.”
– Pete Markey, Chief Marketing Officer, Boots UK
The interactive system uses AI technology from The Take, a contextual product discovery company. The Take’s technology is built directly into LG TV sets in the UK and is being used for the first time in this country by ITV. The service identifies and tags featured products during programmes and notifies viewers that products on-screen are available. If a viewer is interested, they can select to view more info with their remote and make a purchase via the vendor’s site or a link sent to their phone. All 2021 LG TVs have the technology integrated as standard and it can be added via software update to 2019 and 2020 models.
Launching initially in Love Island, ITV plans to roll-out the service on other programmes across different genres throughout the rest of 2021. The Take technology is already live in the USA on 2021, 2020, and 2019 LG TVs.
“Shoppable TV is a wonderful innovation to allow ITV viewers to be able to shop directly from their TVs, filling a real gap currently in the market. We know ITV viewers enjoy being able to purchase items featured in our programmes and this makes doing that smoother and easier than ever before.”
– Paul Ridsdale, Acting Chief Marketing Officer, ITV
You might be wondering what this means for you as a marketplace seller and at the moment the answer is absolutely nothing. But this is an insight into the future and whilst shoppable TV will be something for a few selected large retailers to start with, it will only take one innovative marketplace to jump on board for sales to be opened up to SME retailers as well.
2 Responses
What a load of rubbish (the show and the ads).
Don’t these companies realise the “consumer” is not just some mindless buying machine you can feed products into?
We want better consumerism, not endless junk.
The real future market is for companies that resist all this. Dumb TVs should make a comeback, for starters.
Awful. Awful. Awful. Just no.